(IMPEACHMENT) SHOULD READ !!! - Sorry, Got Fed Up With The MUST Stuff...

Edited on Fri Mar-10-06 08:38 PM by WillyT

Will the real conservatives please stand up?

Ira EisenbergFriday, March 10, 2006

<snip>

Like many of you, I have watched with growing alarm the ominous starboard tack of our ship of state under the command of President Bush. But when the debate over presidential power erupted following revelations that this administration has been secretly spying on Americans in violation of the Constitution and federal law, a troubling question occurred to me. Where have all the conservatives gone?

I'm old enough to remember when real conservatives valued freedom over security, and stood for strictly limited government, fiscal discipline, the sanctity of constitutional checks and balances and the rule of law over obeisance to power. I also have vivid, if not entirely fond, memories of that archetypal American conservative, Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, the GOP candidate for president in 1964, whose declaration that "extremism in defense of liberty is no vice" helped clinch an historic landslide victory for his opponent, Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Goldwater's conservative principles put him in opposition to most of the New Deal-era economic and social reforms that most Americans support. Yet those same convictions also prompted Goldwater to defend gay rights, support Roe vs. Wade, oppose the religious right, demand President Richard M. Nixon's resignation for abusing his constitutional authority and denounce the Vietnam War as "the biggest damn fool mistake we ever made."

It was under President Ronald Reagan's bleary stewardship that real conservatives were largely displaced in the upper ranks of government by an aggressive new breed of so-called neoconservatives, whose ideology was neither new nor authentically conservative but an artifact of the Cold War. The founding philosophers of neoconservatism -- Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol -- drew their youthful political inspiration from Leon Trotsky, a radical communist whose doctrine of perpetual revolution was too extreme even for the Soviet Union's ruling Stalinists, who exiled and eventually assassinated him. Among the neoconservatives who came to occupy the West Wing during the Reagan years were Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, all of whom helped shape the Bush administration's misbegotten attempt to pacify the Middle East by waging war there.

Central to the neocon doctrine is the notion that the president possesses "inherent powers" -- nowhere to be found in the Constitution but somehow divined from his role as commander in chief -- to take the law into his own hands when confronted with a threat to "national security." It is the basis upon which the Bush administration has justified torturing "enemy combatants," holding them incommunicado indefinitely without judicial hearing, a hope of a trial or, in most cases, access to a lawyer. In addition, as we only recently learned, snooping on countless ordinary Americans without congressional permission or supervision by the courts.

If allowed to go unchallenged, this accretion of executive power could permanently transform our self-governing republic into something uncomfortably akin to a police state. Because the genius of our Constitution resides in the way it distributes power among the executive, legislative and judicial branches. It is this system of checks and balances that protects our civil liberties and keeps the government on the democratic straight and narrow.

~snip~

Only Congress possesses a constitutional weapon powerful enough to stop a president run amok, and it is impeachment. Were he still among us, that crustily authentic conservative, Goldwater, might well be on his feet in the Senate today denouncing Bush, Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as rank statists and lowdown authoritarian usurpers. Yet the current crop of congressional Republicans seems more committed to providing legal cover for Bush than upholding checks and balances.

Congress urgently needs to have a serious debate over more than just congressional oversight over warrant-less domestic eavesdropping, but also the larger issue of presidential power. But that can't happen so long as real conservatives in the GOP continue to put loyalty to their president above love of country. Patriots on both sides of the aisle need to put aside their policy differences and stand together in defense of constitutional government -- while we still have a democracy worth saving.

11. If the Dems don't get on the stick, Repubs will beat them to Impeachment.

Edited on Fri Mar-10-06 11:36 PM by pat_k

. . . which is probably the only thing the Republican caucus could do at this point that could possibly turn the tide back their way.

We are definitely seeing a growing number of folks on the "other side" getting VERY angry, and their anger is finding a focus: George W. Bush.

And it sounds like we are going to be hearing more and more from rats leaving the sinking ship. The following from Mike Allen on Countdown tonight in the segment on O'Connor's statements today.

. . .it's a leading indicator of what we are going to be seeing -- as people who are maybe now in public life . . maybe people who are now in high level positions, as they become freer to talk, may express reservations about some of what has been done.

Republicans tend to be impatient people who, when faced with a problem, just look for someone to blame.

Any leader who accues Bush of his crimes in no uncertain terms and demands impeachment would not only be giving voice to the anger felt by a growing majority of Americans, they would be giving pissed off Republicans their scapegoat (It's all Bush fault. He's ruining the party. Let's Get 'Em!)

If the Republicans beat the Democratic caucus to it, Dems could be screwed. But if leaders of the Democratic Party take up the fight for impeachment RIGHT NOW they would be creating a stark contrast: Courageous Dems fighting for principle vs. rubber stamp Repubs.

There's a strong case that fighting for impeachment would be a winner for Dems, but effects on the Party, positive or negative, are not the reason to act. They must act because it is a moral imperative to do so.

Being an accomplice to crime is NEVER good politics(That vote for war didn't turn out so well, did it??")

We need to help Democratic members of Congress to see that if they fail to act, they become accomplices in the crimes being committed by the Bush Syndicate.

Being an accomplice in a wrong is NEVER good politics. Our leaders just need to look at their failure to take a stand against the Iraq war for proof. They voted for the war because they feared they would be called names ("unpatriotic" or whatever). We need to remind them of the serious price they are paying now for giving in to threats of "backlash" then.

Now they face the same fear ("We can't demand an impeachment inquiry. If we do they'll call us unpatriotic for attacking a president in a time of war"). If they allow this fear to stop them from fighting for impeachment, they are digging themselves into a hole they may never get out of.

When we find out the magnitude of Bush's crimes (and we will, sooner or later) do they really want to be accomplices in those crimes?

If You Doubt it is a Moral Imperative to Fight for Impeachment

With regard to criminal activities of in Judiciary or Executive branches, Congress has a duty that is akin to any law enforcement agency.

When the police see a crime in progress, they have a duty to act. They do not stop to ask whether or not they will successfully catch, convict, and punish the criminals. They do not ask whether the criminals' friends will call them names. They go after the criminals. They seek to bring them to justice.

Congress is no different. Members of Congress take an oath to protect and support the Constitution for the United States of America. Bush, Cheney, and their co-conspirators in the executive branch are abusing power, breaking our laws, and violating the sole moral principle on which our Constitution, and therefore the nation, was founded -- the consent of the governed.

The men and women of our armed services risk life and limb to fulfill their oath to support and defend the Constitution for the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Why should we expect less of members of Congress?

Nothing that members of Congress fear -- being called names, backlash, being voted out, whatever -- compares to the risks we expect members of our armed services to take.

The Republican caucus has a choice. . .

Assuming the Democratic members of Congress wake up and stand up for impeachment, the Republicans have a choice, move fast, bring articles of impeachment and remove Bush and Cheney now and they get President Hastert, or wait 'til the Democratic Party takes the House and Senate and get President Pelosi.

If they refuse to go forward before 2006 elections, no problem. If Democratic leaders are out there demanding impeachment, the half of the country that has been appalled by the fascist takeover will be activated in a way never seen before; they'll gain support from angry Republicans.

In this scenario, Dems could win margins never seen before -- enough to give them the courage to actually do things that 80% Americans have wanted to see for a LONG time (right to health care for all, increased minimum wage so workers actually make a living wage, and on and on).

One way or the other, it would spell the end of the fascist era in American.

Our Congress can focus on the crimes against the American people and their constitution: starting with abuse of power, terrorizing the nation with Mushroom Clouds in 45 minutes (which they ALL knew were empty threats intended to terrorize and coerce the nation into the war the PNACons were hell-bent on waging), criminal surveillance program.

But, for their crimes against other nations that they committed in our name, we must turn them over to the Hague War Crimes Tribunal. It is the only way to redeem this nation and restore our self-respect.

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